Friday, 10 April 2009

This fellow may look like a furry Cambrian druid. But he is in fact the leader of a congregation that used to be referred to as "the Tory Party at prayer". If such a thing ever had the ring of truth about it, it was several decades ago. One might more accurately describe the Church of England nowadays as the moral conscience of Socialism.

As a cheerful atheist who has no hang ups about belting out hymns in the fine architecture of our parish churches and the glorious caverns of our great cathedrals, I am in no position to argue the finer points of Christian morality.

But I will say this: if Dr Williams cannot muster up the courage to mount a robust defence of the established church in Britain, then he should not be surprised that it has become a laughing stock. As the Church of England becomes less serious and more liberal with each passing year, so the pews empty and the roof timbers rot. The beef-and-claret parsons of my youth have been replaced by earnest do-gooders who do not recognise the old certainties of individual responsibility and accountability.

Perhaps the church has always been political. But I doubt it has ever been so cringing in its attitudes to some other faiths. Rod Liddle, as ever calling a spade a bloody shovel, deals with it here. This is one of his conclusions:

It is a little like the BBC, in a way, the Church of England. We all knew why it was brought into being and we all signed up to the necessity for its existence, back then. And we might still have an affection for both institutions, based upon nostalgia and wishful thinking. And yet now, with every year that passes, one wonders why they both still exist, what the purpose is, exactly, for having them.

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WS Churchill's Words of Warning:

"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves".

Too True

"That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European superstate was ever embarked upon will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era.”

The All-Time Best Daily Mash

Idle

On Limited Government

"We are a nation with a government, not the other way round".

Reagan, inaugural speech, Jan 20 1981

(Interim) Last Word on the Subject

Stated briefly, I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest.

Prof Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Atmospheric Brainbox of the World